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Water pollution also reduces the ecosystem services such as drinking water provided by the water resource. Sources of water pollution are either point sources or non-point sources. [156] Point sources have one identifiable cause, such as a storm drain, a wastewater treatment plant, or an oil spill. Non-point sources are more diffuse.
Levels of air pollution rose during the Industrial Revolution, sparking the first modern environmental laws to be passed in the mid-19th century. The environmental movement (sometimes referred to as the ecology movement) is a social movement that aims to protect the natural world from harmful environmental practices in order to create ...
The Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, published by the United Nation's IPBES in 2019, posits that roughly one million species of plants and animals face extinction from anthropogenic causes, such as expanding human land use for industrial agriculture and livestock rearing, along with overfishing. [10] [11] [12]
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause harm. [1] Pollution can take the form of any substance (solid, liquid, or gas) or energy (such as radioactivity, heat, sound, or light). Pollutants, the components of pollution, can be either foreign substances/energies or naturally occurring contaminants.
For example, water pollution with toxic chemicals is an anthropogenic hazard as well as an environmental hazard. One of the classification methods is by specifying the origin of the hazard. One key concept in identifying a hazard is the presence of stored energy that, when released, can cause damage.
The risk of air pollution is determined by the pollutant's hazard and the amount of exposure that affects a person. [36] For example, a child who plays outdoor sports will have a higher likelihood of outdoor air pollution exposure than an adult who tends to spend more time indoors, whether at work or elsewhere. [36]
noise pollution (environmental noise) - displeasing human or machine created sound that disrupts the activity or happiness of human or animal life. nonpoint source pollution - water pollution affecting a water body from diffuse sources, rather than a point source which discharges to a water body at a single location.
Books about or featuring the environment as a prominent theme have proliferated especially since the middle of the twentieth century. The rise of environmental science , which has encouraged interdisciplinary approaches to studying the environment, and the environmental movement , which has increased public and political awareness of humanity's ...